Rotary cutting tools are useful for cutting thin material such as, for example, paper, paperboard, cardboard, plastic film, metal foil, thin sheet metal, etc. Typically such thin material is positioned between a pair of die plates mounted on corresponding rotating die cylinders. The thin material may be received on a large roll and fed between the rotating dies for high volume production of cut blanks.
It is important that the die plates be properly affixed to the cylinder and aligned, both with respect to the cylinder and with respect to each other. This is especially important given the speed of rotation of the die cylinders associated with high volume production. Known techniques for affixing and aligning the die plates include forming the die plate and die cylinders out of a magnetic material so that they are magnetically attracted to one another. However, such a design greatly increases the costs of the die cylinders. It would be highly desirable to have a rotary cutting tool which did not require the use of a magnetic cylinder to affix and to control the position of the die plate.